3.5 years ago, I got married, bought a house, and had a kid all within 5 months. Yes, for all you mathematicians, kind of a shotgun wedding. And yes, all you daytime talkshow hosts, the kid was with the same girl I married.

We bought HUD in a great neighborhood for raising kids. It took a LOT of work, but the sweat equity paid off and we are well above water on the house right now. Good luck, buying the house is the easy part...

At the moment, I am on an unreliable connection at an auto shop where they are, at this moment, doing the vacuum test on my wife's van's A/C system. Hopefully, it is just a recharge, but as the performance of the unit gradually declined over the course of 3-4 months, I imagine there is a leak. C'est la vie, I guess.

The rest of today will be spent prepping for my kids' birthday party tomorrow - their birthdays are only five weeks apart, so we meet them in the middle and have a joint party. Well, we will do that for as long as they allow us to do it anyway. This might be problematic by the time they reach their teens, if my experience with my sisters is any indication.

Depending on the damage at the shop, it could be anything from Boddington's to whiskey. I will likely know what I'll be drinking inside the next several hours.

The last few times I've been to Art Fair, my wife and I stroll around for a few hours trying to find something we like before we realize that there's no way in hell that we can afford any of the pieces that catch our eye. Then we just wind up sitting out in the garden area of Dominicks getting drunk on sangria.

I was just in Cleveland last weekend. Mrs. 1989 UM Grad has family in the Beachwood and Solon areas. Enjoyed the Indians game last Saturday night. Disappointed not to make it to Corky & Lenny's however. Great deli!

I just got my graphics card for my first-time PC build so I'm psyched. Gonna assemble everything this weekend. Now I just need to get a copy of Windows 7 Home Premium. Anyone know somewhere I can get it for cheap? I'll need it on disk (as opposed to downloadable). OEM version is fine.

Yeah, I see Amazon and Newegg are both at around $99 for the OEM version. I'm trying to be cheap about it since I sprung for the i5 processor and the GTX 760 GPU (not to mention a SSD as well). This was supposed to be a budget first-time build but I found a way to keep upgrading . . .

Honestly, you're right in the perfect range for cost-savings. If you go with an actual "budget" build, you will end up needing upgrades in 2-3 years. If you set out to buy the cheapest option in the slightly ahead of the curve category, you won't need upgrades for 5+ years and you end up getting a much better deal in the long run.

Example. I built a PC 6.5 years ago when Core 2 Duos were the big thing. I got the cheapest C2D that you could get and overclocked it from 1.8GHz to 2.7GHz. I bought 2GB of DDR2 RAM. I spent less than $700 while my goal was $600. A few months later, I saw 4GB DDR2 on sale, so I upgraded that and my graphics card died a few years ago, so I had to replace that. All-in-all, I've spent probably $800 on that PC over the last 6.5 years and it is still running strong. Granted, if I want to play the top-end games, I'll need to upgrade, but I'm not using it for gaming anymore, so I'll wait until it no longer does what I need it to and I'll build a new PC then.

Long story short, I think that you'll find your splurges will actually save you money in the long run.

I have the next ten days off of work (not by choice, just slow) so I am going to do some camping and attempt to catch many many trout. I will also be drinking many beers and smoking many buds during that span.

Unfortunately working all day, but later, I will be taking in some of the ComicCon madness here in San Diego. I have already witnessed Mr. McGibblets pedi-cabs, Batman and Spiderman making out, and the trolley lines written in Dothraki, and that was just opening Thursday. Tonight should be a show.

Horrible, horrible work week that just won't end. It's made worse because I'm heading to the NC Outer Banks next week for vacation. Too many loose ends to wrap up before leaving town, though. But I'll be tapping a cold Yuengling in a few days, so all will be well. (I don't know why, but I always get Yuengling when I'm on the East Coast.)

If there's one thing that can keep me away from AA it's the art fair. I'm heading to Palate tonight in Milford. They have a lot of beers on tap plus my buddy was just there the other night and said they have Founders Backwoods Bastard and Jolly Pumpkin Madguada Obscura. A couple of my personal favorites. They also have pretty decent food.

Tomorrow I'm going out with my family for my early birthday dinner (July 23rd) and I think I'm going to pick the Deadwood in Northville. Nothing too fancy when it comes to beer but their food is outstanding.

Next Friday and Saturday is the Michigan Brewers Guild Summer Beer Fest. Always a very good and interesting time. My buddy and his Dad go every year to the summer fest in Ypsi and the winter fest in Grand Rapids. I'm just hoping for the weather to not be 90+ with high humidity. Cheers to everyone. Go Blue and be safe.

I waited 12 hours for the huge letdown of a garage sale. But finished my day with a NCAA marathon. Beat ND in 7 overtimes after CMU gave me a run for my money. You'd think with the lead in Road to Glory mode with a minute left and your opponent has 0 timeouts your coach would call for run plays or kneels. NOPE. My wise coach had my slow scrambler of a QB run 3 passes plays, punt, and CMU tied it up on a Hail Mary. Rant over